Chief Justice Roberts teaches a language lesson: "The noun 'crab' refers variously to a crustacean and a type of apple, while the related adjective 'crabbed' can refer to handwriting that is 'difficult to read'..."

"... 'corny' can mean 'using familiar and stereotyped formulas believed to appeal to the unsophisticated,' which has little to do with 'corn,' ('the seeds of any of the cereal grasses used for food'); and while 'crank' is “a part of an axis bent at right angles,' 'cranky' can mean 'given to fretful fussiness."

And the point is, a corporation may be a "person" within the meaning of the Freedom of Information statute, but that doesn't mean it's gets in on the "personal" privacy referred to elsewhere in the statute.

[I]n ordinary usage, a noun and its adjective form may have meanings as disparate as any two unrelated words. ...

"Person" is a defined term in the statute; “personal” is not. When a statute does not define a term, we typically “give the phrase its ordinary meaning.”... “Personal” ordinarily refers to individuals. We do not usually speak of personal characteristics, personal effects, personal correspondence, personal influence, or personal tragedy as referring to corporations or other artificial entities. This is not to say that corporations do not have correspondence, influence, or tragedies of their own, only that we do not use the word “personal” to describe them.

Certainly, if the chief executive officer of a corporation approached the chief financial officer and said, "I have something personal to tell you," we would not assume the CEO was about to discuss company business. Responding to a request for information, an individual might say, "that’s personal." A company spokesman, when asked for information about the company, would not.

Crisply explained!

IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin said:

While he's got the FCC's attention, mention that the "fucking" in "fucking brilliant" is not an adjective.

Ha! He's referring to this FCC opinion:

The complainants allege that the licensees named in their respective complaints aired the “Golden Globe Awards” program, during which the performer Bono uttered the phrase “this is really, really, fucking brilliant,” or “this is fucking great.”...

The word “fucking” may be crude and offensive, but, in the context presented here, did not describe sexual or excretory organs or activities. Rather, the performer used the word “fucking” as an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation. Indeed, in similar circumstances, we have found that offensive language used as an insult rather than as a description of sexual or excretory activity or organs is not within the scope of the Commission’s prohibition of indecent program content.

"Fucking" can be an adjective, as in "You're a fucking crank," "Watch out for the fucking crab," or "I can't believe you're serving fucking corn again," but in the Bono boast, it's a fucking adverb.

"You and I have each befriended each other on Facebook. And you will note that I am not using 'friend' as a verb."

Defining geezerhood, it's George Johnson:



Speaking of Facebook, "'The Social Network' Dominates Golden Globes." So the big movie of the year, the one that they were celebrating last night on television, as about something on the internet. Sorry. I didn't go out to the movie, and I didn't watch the TV awards show, because I was spending time on the internet — and I kind of think that was true of an awful lot of people.

"How did McConnell go from uncertain to cocksure in two days?"

"A confluence of facts and events helped McConnell convince senior appropriators in his own party -- people who, like he..."

... like he...

"... don't fundamentally oppose the earmarking process -- to back off the omnibus, according to a Republican leadership aide. Part of it was that, though bipartisan, the bill itself included funding for key Democratic priorities that in the current political environment no Republican supports, or wants to be accused of supporting. The omnibus included $1 billion in spending to implement the health care law -- a provision no Republican wanted to de facto support."

"Rich professors doth protest too much."

Says Michael Kinsley. And I might want to read that article, but I'm too annoyed by the use of the verb "dost" with a third-person plural subject. I know it's a Shakespearean reference, but in an effort to go literary, he goes illiterate. He goeth illiterate. See? Doth is does, with a lisp. It's not plural.

ADDED: This post wrongly assumes Kinsley writes his own headlines over at Politico. Some unknown headline writer attempting to be literary, went illiterate.

"Your call will be answered in the order it was received."

Why does this common phrase feel grammatically wrong? I was on hold long enough to find the answer:

... a single thing cannot be received in a particular order. "Your call will be answered in the order your call was received?"

Suggestion: Calls will be answered in the order they were received.

I feel much better now.

"I just wanted a multigrain bagel. I refused to say 'without butter or cheese.'"

"When you go to Burger King, you don't have to list the six things you don't want. Linguistically, it's stupid, and I'm a stickler for correct English... I yelled, 'I want my multigrain bagel!' The barista said, 'You're not going to get anything unless you say butter or cheese!'"

Meet this week's mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it-anymore character, Lynne Rosenthal.

"Every shoe has a hamster in it."

Is that so much harder to understand than "Every toothbrush is in a mug"? It is, for a lot of people. We're talking form here. Grammar. Not why anyone would be putting hamsters in shoes.

***

But if you're reading this post because you're interested in hamsters... did you read that the City of San Francisco is considering a ban all the sale of all pets except fish? And hamsters are getting singled out as the core problem the sensitive Friscans are aching to solve:

The real problem, [the city's animal control] staff said, is hamsters.

People buy the high-strung, nocturnal rodents because they're under the temporary impression that hamsters are cute and cuddly. But the new owners quickly learn that hamsters are, in fact, prone to biting, gnawing through expensive wiring and maniacally racing on their exercise wheels at 2 a.m.

So the animals end up at the shelter. Just about every species has its own rescue group in San Francisco, but no one seems to want hamsters. Hamsters are the No. 1 animal euthanized at the city's shelter, said San Francisco Animal Care and Control director Rebecca Katz.

"It's definitely a concern," she said. "They're an impulse buy, and we do sometimes get tons of them, especially babies."

Ms. Katz is upset about the death of baby hamsters. Presumably, there is also a Ms. Hamsterz who's upset about the death of kittens.

***

I hope you understand this blog post. I know there are a lot of people who don't understand some sentences. Do you understand my sentences? Is it the grammar... or is it something else?

What's the hardest part of reading these blog posts?
	There's some strange grammar here.
	Too many questions, not enough answers.
	I'm never quite sure what Althouse's point of view is.
	There's some crazy topic switching here and I don't know why.
	I'm dogged by the feeling that, like some evil kitty cat, Althouse is toying with us.
pollcode.com free polls

At the Country Store Café...

... either there's no smoking or pets are allowed.

Tea Party-haters see racism everywhere — except in themselves.

Yesterday, we were talking about the Flickr page set up to collect photographs of Tea Party signs with grammar and spelling errors. The page is called "Teabonics," a term intended to express how stupid Tea Partiers are. But the coinage "Teabonics" is a play on "Ebonics." The word "Ebonics" isn't supposed to make fun of mistakes made by black people. It embodies the claim that speech that may sound nonstandard is, in fact, a language with its own grammar, that may be studied and learned.

Working on this post, I saw that Language Log had written about "Teabonics," and I assumed I would get some good analysis about the misuse of "Ebonics" in coining the new word. But here's what I found:

Teabonics?

March 31, 2010 @ 6:38 pm · Filed by Mark Liberman under Humor

Pictures here.

Including some nice examples of Muphry's Law in action....

Muphry's Law? Muphry's Law? Ha! Hang on a second, I need to recover from deep pangs of irony. Mock spelling, and you'd better make sure you never ever ever ever ever make a typo.

It takes more than 2 hours before anyone shows up on the popular linguistics blog to take Liberman to task for failing to see the swipe at black people:

Elizabeth Herrington said,
March 31, 2010 @ 8:47 pm

This is funny, sure. But we need to remember Ebonics (inglorious word it be) is based on a grammar. Teabonics is just plain ignorance.

***

Lance said,
March 31, 2010 @ 9:07 pm

... I'm sort of sorry that LanguageLog is propagating this. The common tagline is that "linguists are calling [this] Teabonics"; except that, as Elizabeth Herrington says above, recognizing Ebonics is deeply rooted in linguistic concepts, whereas this is just making fun of misspelling. And while I'm in favor politically of making fun of tea-partiers, I'm professionally against calling it "Teabonics", which elevates this to actual academic study and debases Ebonics as being equivalently illiterate.

So, why the blindness to racism? I suspect that it is a combination of the conventional liberal self-love — the mind-dulling confidence that they are the good people — and the embarrassing secret that the study of Ebonics was never truly grounded in respect for black people.

CORRECTION: "Muphry's Law," spelled like that, is something that has been talked about in the past on Language Log. Liberman's writing "Muphry's Law" would be an example of Muphry's Law if the term "Muphry's Law" hadn't been coined to refer to things like that. Thanks to the commenter Dewb for pointing this out.

Propagating the notion that Tea Partiers must be stupid.

It's the "Teabonics" Flickr set, collecting photographs from Tea Party events that depict signs with spelling or grammar errors. Example:



The first commenter says: "I guess that's why they call it 'fee'-dom." A few comments down someone asks if maybe it's Photoshopping. Yes, it's so easy to Photoshop errors onto people's signs. (I wonder if there are any defamation lawsuits based on the photographic lie that results.)

Via Wonkette, where commenters are having fun mocking someone who wrote "I did’nt serve 22 years for Socialism":

I love the “Did’NT Serve” sign.

Seems the three Rs for Teabaggers is Retardism, Racism, and Recidivism not that librul reading, riting and rithmatics.

Simpleton white dumbfuck retards, all.

So, one man served in the military for more than 2 decades and then misplaced an apostrophe, and another is skilled in the detection of racism and the use of mental disability as metaphor.

I must correct Barack Obama's grammar.

He said:

"A systemic failure has occurred and I consider that totally unacceptable. There was a mix of human and systemic failure that contributed to this potential catastrophic breach of security."

He meant "potentially catastrophic breach of security." Potential needs to be an adverb, because it modifies the adjective catastrophic. It shouldn't be an adjective, which makes it seem to modify the noun breach. It was a breach. If the bomb had gone off, it would have been catastrophic. That's where the potentiality lies.

***

Anyway, it's painful to see the scramble to get from Napolitano's "the system worked" to "totally unacceptable ... catastrophic breach."

And speaking of Napolitano's abysmal performance over the weekend... where's Hillary? Was she made Secretary of State for the purpose of hiding her away?

Which is the more embarrassing bungling of verb forms?

1. "If you were graduating from Princeton in the first part of the 20th century, you probably heard the university president, John Hibben, deliver one of his commencement addresses."

2. "I really wonder how the stimulus would have went had Lieberman been kicked."

"We affirm the students’ right to their own patterns and varieties of language..."

"... the dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity and style."

A tragically misguided ideal from 1974.

Linguistic forms, it is said, are not God-given; they are the conventional products of social/cultural habit and therefore none of them is naturally superior or uniquely “correct.” It follows (according to this argument) that any claim of correctness is political, a matter of power not of right. “If we teach standardized, handbook grammar as if it is the only ‘correct’ form of grammar, we are teaching in cooperation with a discriminatory power system” (Patricia A. Dunn and Kenneth Lindblom, English Journal, January, 2003).

That's so appallingly well-meaning of them.

Shepard Fairey — who made the famous Obama "Hope" poster — thinks the Joker Obama poster is "great."

"The artwork is great in that it gets a point across really quickly. The Joker is a sinister, evil character that can't be trusted. And if they want to make that parallel with Obama — bam."

Somehow the L.A. Times sees fit to headline the article "Shepard Fairey has 'doubts' about intelligence of Obama Joker artist." The intelligence doubt is actually a "grammar" point, that the caption should be "socialist," not "socialism," because it's a picture of a man, not his belief system. Hmmm... but Mr. Fairey, your poster of Obama has the word "Hope" as the caption. If it's an error, you made it too. If it's a sign of low intelligence, why should I listen to you, a man of low intelligence?

The news from Ouray: An old woman was (perhaps) eaten by a bear.

"It was still unknown Saturday whether a bear killed [Donna] Munson or whether one or more animals consumed part of her body after her death. But people who knew her said she was an eccentric wildlife lover who had been feeding bears, elk, skunks and raccoons for years. Munson [had said] that 'when the time came, she wanted to go out with the bears.'... The night before her death, Munson planned to feed an injured baby bear hard-boiled eggs and yogurt.... And she had planned to swat a large bear that was bothering the baby bear with a broom...."

Put down that broom, large bear!

That was my grammar snark. My real commentary is: It sounds like a bad way to go, but Munson seemed to know what she was doing. It almost seems as though it's appropriate to say something I generally disapprove of: She died doing what she loved.

Some people just get carried away with animal love. Go to the link to read about her (now-deceased) husband, "Ridgway Jack," who made their home an "animal sanctuary" and let a fawn sleep in their bed. And read about her former tenant Tammy York, who said that Munson put wire fencing around the porch after York and her 2 children — a 1-year-old and a 4-year-old — moved in:

The bears would come within 6 feet of the porch and peer in the windows.

"We were in the zoo," she recalled, saying she moved out after about a year because the animals — especially the skunks — "got to be too much." While she lived there, a bear busted York's car window and left bite marks in her seat trying to get some leftover french fries.

Okay. Munson was completely eccentric and foolish, but let's think about York, who had 2 little children and took a year to figure out that she needed to move away. Well, face it: a lot of people are out of their minds when it comes to thinking about animals.

***

Munson was eaten in Ouray on Friday. Meade and I were in Ouray Tuesday through Thursday. It's a beautiful place. Here are 2 more photographs:

"Now that we don't march lockstep into marriage anymore and now that women don't require men for economic support, the reasons for marrying..."

"— for a lot of people — are never going to mount up to the point where they justify giving up the status quo of singlehood."

The last sentence of a post of mine from August 2006, which I read today as a consequence of monitoring comments newly added to old posts.

The new comment was a bit of grammar comedy (from Invisible Rope):

Men don't marry because women can't properly use the reflexive tense in their writing.

See the post title to get the joke.

Rereading the old post was an eerie experience, given my recent history. Am I piling up the reasons for marrying and for maintaining "the status quo of singlehood" to see which pile "mounts up" the highest? No, no, it doesn't feel like that at all. That sentence was obviously written by someone who was solidly single and justifying it. Faced with a choice, how rational are we?